Welp. I already added a $20 Claude Pro subscription to complement my $10 Github Copilot Pro subscription and $10 DuckDuckGo Plus. That was partly to show support for Anthropic after the OpenAI/DOD episode, but also because I've been using Opus 4.5 exclusively with Copilot and I figured I should try Claude Code eventually.

Now it's going to cost me an upgrade to $39 Github Pro+ to keep using Opus, and even then it's with much higher multipliers. I don't fully understand the extent to which this reflects actual costs for Opus versus Microsoft leveraging network effects to discourage the usage of a competitor.

I didn't really want to wander outside of VSCode just yet because I was happy with VSCode/Copilot/Opus-4.5 and I don't want to spend all my time experimenting when stuff is changing so fast. But I guess my hand has been forced.

>$39 Github Pro+ to keep using Opus,

For what its worth, i have been paying for Pro+ and i still got locked out of Opus. I only have access to Opus 4.7 at 7.5x

> I didn't really want to wander outside of VSCode just yet because I was happy with VSCode/Copilot/Opus-4.5

This was my first thought too but apparently you can just use Claude Code within VSC: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/vs-code